“A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It”? A Conversation with Ginie Servant-Miklos, Raïsa Mirza, Will Richardson & Manda Scott

Future Learning Design Podcast

The inspiration for this end-of-year impromptu gathering came from a recent flurry of ‘Collapse'-inspired exchanges in my (un)social media feeds! This was prompted largely by Ginie Servant Miklos’ recently published and brilliant book, Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for The End of The World as We Know It (quoted in the title of the episode) and Will Richardson’s equally provocative and inspiring, Confronting Education In a Time of Complexity, Chaos and Collapse.

As regular listeners will know, this podcast is really focused on the need for radical and systemic change in ways that would be more loving, humanising, nourishing…, not just in education, but in all spheres of our lives. But seeing all of this Collapse chat, the question I was left with was something about the ‘how’ of inviting people towards this change. It made me think of this powerful quote from Adam Curtis:

"We’ve retreated into a sense that there’s always a new apocalypse on the horizon; it’s a terrible teddy bear that the bourgeois greens hug to themselves and say, “We’re all going to die, it’s terrible.” That’s not the way you change the world. In fact, it frightens people, and when people are frightened they don’t want change. It’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. Of course, there are serious issues. And of course, they’re incredibly dangerous. But fear is the last resort of those who’ve failed to mobilise people to transform the world for the better. I get grumpy about this because it’s almost cowardly.” (https://crackmagazine.net/article/profiles/adam-curtis-nathalie-olah-interview/)

So Manda Scott, Raïsa Mirza, Will Richardson, Ginie Servant-Miklos and I gathered yesterday to talk about all of this and more!

Brief bios below, but you can find full show notes here: https://www.goodimpactlabs.com/podcast/a-hopeful-education

Manda Scott - https://mandascott.co.uk/ ; https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/

Manda was once a veterinary surgeon and is now an award-winning novelist, smallholder, contemporary shamanic trainer and podcaster (https://accidentalgods.life). 2024 saw the publication of her sixteenth novel, Any Human Power, a ‘visionary’ contemporary political thriller that maps fictional – but plausible and workable – routes toward a future we’d all be proud to leave to the generations that come after us: human and more-than-human.

Raïsa Mirza - https://raisamirza.com/ ; https://www.linkedin.com/in/raisamirza/

Raïsa is a Bangladeshi-Canadian photographer, educator, designer, facilitator and social entrepreneur. She is currently Head of Social Impact Initiatives & Lighthouse Changemaker Hub and Systems Transformation teacher (https://www.uwcatlantic.org/learning/academic/systems-transformation-pathway) at UWC Atlantic College, Wales. She is also Founder & Principal of WabiSabiJetty: Design for Resilience (https://www.wabisabijetty.com/).

Will Richardson - https://willrichardson.com/ ; https://www.linkedin.com/in/willrichardsonbqi/

Will is a co-founder of The Big Questions Institute which was created to help educators use "fearless inquiry" to make sense of this complex moment and an uncertain future. In 2024, he authored a "manifesto" titled "Confronting Education in a Time of Complexity, Chaos, and Collapse" aimed at provoking serious conversations about the future of schools.

Ginie Servant-Miklos - https://www.clubofrome.org/member/miklos-ginie/; https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginie-servant-miklos/

Ginie Servant-Miklos is Assistant Professorship in Behavioural Sciences at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in Rotterdam and founder and Chair of the Board of the ⁠⁠FairFight Foundation. She co-founded the Bildung Climate School with Prof. Rutger Engels, and is the author of the best-selling book, Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It (https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350400528).